 Yeah, all right. Here we go. All right. Welcome, Jenny, I'm gonna hand this over to you. I see you out there. I am here. Yes, but can who's running slides? That's the only thing I'm wondering. That is me. Okay, great. So welcome everyone to our session. We are really excited to have you all here today and we have a great group of folks joining us. So if you want to go to the next slide. So I am joined by Kimberly Smith, who is the executive director of the Center for Inclusive Innovation and the League of Innovative Schools at Digital Promise. I am also from Digital Promise and I serve as a director of solution strategy and growth and together Kim and I have been with a larger group of people have been co-designing and implementing a process that we call inclusive innovation. And so we're going to be sharing about that a little bit later today. We are going to spend most of the time hearing from these wonderful people. So we really want you to hear from students and educators who are doing this work every day. So we're joined by Noor Salome, who's an 11th grade student at Ketima Rain High School for the performing sorry for arts and performance. And she is also a one of the founding members of the Students for Equitable Education Conference that happened last October. And when she's not busy studying and organizing conferences, she's also the principal cellist in the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra. Next to Noor on the slide is Lisa Floyd Jefferson. She's a national board certified teacher of mathematics with 30 years of experience as an educator. And she currently serves as a deeper learning specialist actively working to revolutionize teaching and learning. She has had many roles in education, serving as a paraprofessional, a classroom teacher, a teacher leader, a union representative, a department chair, a building administrator, a central office administrator, an instructional coach, and a curriculum developer. And she has always been an active advocate for equitable opportunities to learn. And so she will have a lot to share with us today as part of this panel. Besides, Lisa on the slide is Nicholas Keith. He's a humanities teacher at STEM Middle at Baldwin Road in Reynoldsburg. I should have said both, both the next four people are from Reynoldsburg City Schools. Nicholas is now in his 11th year of teaching and he enjoys reading, writing and recording original music. So he and Noor may have to go offline and drum up some musical activities. That next we have Siobhan Ross. She is a staunch advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion. She's in her 18th year as an educator and has served as a teacher and most recently as an assistant principal in Reynoldsburg City Schools. She is serving as the co-lead on the Digital Promise OER Racial Equity Core Team with Lisa. She's also the chair of the Reynoldsburg City Schools Board Citizens Advisory Committee on Equity and Inclusion and the Reynoldsburg City Schools District Equity Team. And last but not least we have Dr. Tommy Timmons, who has been an educator for 29 years and for the past five years has been serving as an administrator in Reynoldsburg City Schools. He is currently the deeper learning coordinator and leads the development of K-12 maker spaces. He provides professional development for design thinking, project-based learning and maker education for educators. And he was the founding director of Reynoldsburg's Battelle Fab Lab. So lots of folks here today with lots of experience working in the space of equity and inclusion and they are going to share their stories with you. In addition, Kim and I are going to share with you about the project that we're working with all these folks on. So Kim, if you'll go to the next slide. So we wanted to start just with our why we're doing this project, we're working with 13 districts around the country, all of whom are going to be involved in co-designing and piloting social justice and racial equity teaching and learning resources and all of the resources that they create are going to be open educational resources. Kim, if you'll go to the next slide please. Our why is that we know that today's student body is more diverse than previous generations and they are also more racially and politically aware. So there's a demand for authentic learning from this, this generation of students. We recognize that many teachers in their teacher professional development programs in their training and I'll speak for myself as a former teacher, receive very little training in culturally competent instruction. And so we, we identified a need to help support teachers across the country and elsewhere, hopefully internationally I was part of a session earlier today that had folks from all over the globe. So in building the capacity to effectively foster discussions and and academic work focused on racial justice and social equity and so that's what this project is all about. So our goal with this is to create open scalable professional development resources and a set of classroom practices tools and resources that can be shared to build teachers competency for engaging students in this work. We're going to over the course of the next several months be working with these 13 participating districts to create online teacher professional development resources practices and tools and implementation plan for schools and classrooms. We're going to be sharing case studies from the participating districts about the work that they're doing. And we're going to be hosting some learning events like this one to share their work with the larger education community. So that's enough from me. Now I'm going to turn it over to newer and she's going to share her perspective on what an equitable education means. Hi, my name is newer Salome, and I am a Palestinian American and I'm a junior at the Kilmer in high school for arts and performance. I was a student founder at the students for equitable education summit last year which was a national event put on virtually last year, the premise being to uplift student voices on why equity was important in education is important in education and to have students experiencing the education system, teach teachers and outside perspectives, what being in the modern day education system was like. So I did a presentation back then on the history of systemic racism in our education system, ranging from the broad Brown v Board of Education case to the modern day effects of redlining and how it relates to our school districts. So this is an event that we hope to continue this year and many years after as curriculum and systemic change are things that cannot happen overnight but must be in constant motion to achieve eventual success. Being Palestinian I learned from a young age about my family story, my grandparents were born and raised in Lifta Palestine and were forced out due to a large Israeli military invasion that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The Palestinians call this day El Nakba which translates to the catastrophe in English. My grandparents, as well as 7 million Palestinian refugees have not been able to return to this day. I learned of their struggles as refugees, when I was about seven years old and ever since then, I felt a need to try and raise awareness for the Palestinian struggle and with age, I've began to notice injustice all around me in America. This is where I find my passion for social justice. And this is something that I was never taught in school. I'm interested in social justice. So I'm interested in the educational system and its gaps, because of the way that that history has been taught in this country. We are so invested in forgetting its past to the detriment of those it has oppressed for centuries. What we emit into the world as educators as an education system shapes how citizens view modern day society. The stories we tell and the biased selective version of history told to students becomes a reality. And if we keep teaching books and history from the perspectives of the rewritten selective narrative of the America where you can pick yourself up from your bootstraps no matter who you are, then our students and our society will believe that narrative for the rest of their lives and this is damaging because the stream isn't possible for everyone within our current system. If we trace the trajectory of the American dream, we see that it was never achievable for everybody and we can find this in books like the great Gatsby, because we are not all on the same playing field. From my personal readings and studies of Malcolm X's autobiography and beloved by Tony Morrison I have realized that the real history of this country has been concealed. When we learn, for example, how America became a rich and prosperous society we see that it used exports such as cotton and indigo and rice but never learn of the slaves who were brutally kept to harvest such experts exports. What we are taught in school is a selective version of this country's past and when we do learn the gruesomeness of slavery it is usually a rewritten filtered version of the truth. We have to look deeply at the history we as a society choose to learn, and the history this country chooses to show its youth, as well as those stories and voices we choose to ignore, which are so often those of the marginalized and oppressed. The modern day educational system is designed against minorities and underrepresented communities when we start to hear, and when we start to hear about this country and its past, and its ghosts, the ghosts that haunt our society like genocide and slavery and all of the human lives that have been ruined because of our past and current systems. We may feel despair but that is why it is imperative to learn of our true history to understand the society we live in and to begin to mend what has been torn and broken. So we start changing the system by beginning to read against the grain when we teach novels by Tony Morrison, James Baldwin and words I eat. Arun Dati Roy chinois Alice Walker and Joy Harjo. The main goal as a generation is to create a truthful version of our history, one that shows the issues embedded into society so we can begin to create a world in which all humans have the undeniably right to live with dignity without the danger of racist attacks bias or any other form of systemic oppression. Students deserve access to reliable version of our history and so much more and this starts with education. It starts with the work that you are doing that your school districts are doing that you are doing from being here today, and our vision for equitable education goes beyond a surface level. It's how we do everything how we approach everything how we examine ourselves in order to eliminate the societal bound with which have been placed on us. Equitable education is changing minds as well as hearts and it is imperative that the fight continues in order to accomplish these goals to create a loving and compassionate society. Thank you so much nor that was powerful and incredibly well said if folks have questions for nor please don't hesitate to put them in the chat we will be taking questions at the end from all of our speakers so. Now I'm going to pass the mic to the team from Reynolds Berg city schools and they are going to talk about their why for doing this work. Yeah, so I am Dr Tommy Timmons please refer to me as Tommy that's how everybody knows me and it's a lot shorter as well. Just to give you some perspective I've been in Rollsburg city schools this is my 30th year in the same district so I've seen a lot of this change within this timeline. I think what we wanted you to know is is like a foundation of our why is how things have changed, even within past beyond when I was here. We have like a timeline up here that shows you like the faces of our superintendents over time. We have a timeline of the population of Reynolds Berg, the city, the minority population over time and you can see how that's increased. We also threw in there the world we live in and you can see like from Rodney King to Andre Hill. We have a lot of incidents and a lot of things that are happening that really impact our Reynolds Berg community and our Reynolds Berg schools. As part of that if you go to the next slide. We wanted to show you a snapshot of what our schools are like. We have a large population of minorities in our schools. And if you look across from the 7000 plus students that we have to the 400 plus teachers that we have, you can see that it obviously does not match up as an equitable representation the teachers don't within those populations represent the students. And that's why for us it's really essential that we know that we have a very strong representation and white females in our teaching population, and we have a much diverse and much more diverse population in our student population. We know that a lot of bias and a lot of our systemic issues are coming from our white population, and without us providing that population with the resources to meet the needs of specific children in our district, then we would be in trouble. And I think we've done a good job at doing that. And I think part of what you'll see from our team is we do have a strong why on why we're doing this good work. So next slide. Nicholas Keith is one of our teachers and he's going to address the first question we have on the slide. Thank you, Tommy. Hello, my name is Nicholas Keith. I am an 11th year educator spent several years working as a reading intervention teacher for Columbus public. And I have for the past seven years been working at a STEM school here in Reynolds Berg, where I've done my best to engage the kids in authentic project based learning that engages them in a way that I think incorporates some of the social justice aspects that we've just been discussing. We live in a society where students need 21st century skills in order to become active members of the future community to create the kinds of citizens that do those things it's imperative that we actively engage our students in authentic learning that uses 21st century to drive that learning. We need conversations relevant to the society that they live in and the shifting societal paradigms that they'll encounter over their lifetimes. We've seen paradigm shifts here in Reynolds Berg over the course of the last 10 years. We've seen social paradigm shifts just in the last two years at large across the United States that have changed the conversations in our classrooms. We have no choice but to engage in those real conversations with our kids and to use those conversations to drive our instruction. The Eurocentric version of history doesn't work anymore for my kids in my school, and soon it won't work for anybody's. We have a changing shift of demographic across the United States, and we can no longer ignore some of the hidden history. That we're all becoming aware of in recent years. Thank you. The next question is, we get a lot is why involve diverse stakeholders, and I'm going to let Siobhan Ross start off on that. Good afternoon everybody diverse stakeholders are so important to this work so that we are getting multiple perspectives and multiple world views when we're offering authentic learning opportunities for our students. We want to bring everyone literally to the table we want to bring our community partners we want to bring our parents we want to bring our students. We want to bring our communities to the table, so that we can hear their stories and their voices and that those are reflected in the work that we do. We want to make each learning opportunity here in this district, like I stated authentic. And we also want to ensure that we're doing it in a culturally competent way. And so our district being as diverse as it is. We want to make sure that we're representing those ideas and cultures and beliefs in the work that we do with our student hands on in the classroom so that is why it is so important to have that diverse mix. What we're partaking in this work. I would agree with everything that Siobhan has said I would also add to that that in any initiative that I've been involved in throughout my educational career. And if you do not have the diverse stakeholders that represent your community and it is very hard to sustain that it's hard to work we're in the business when we're doing this work of breaking down systematic stuff that isn't been embedded for a long time. Without those stakeholders involved in it. It's like banging your head against the wall. So I think having students involved having community members involved, having local politicians involved, having teachers involved in administrators from it's from the ground up. That's what sustains any type of change in the work that we're doing towards racial justice and social or social equity and racial justice social justice. I think Lisa is going to speak about why open educational resources. Good afternoon everyone. Before I speak about why open education resources. I also want to add a point on why involved diverse stakeholders. I want to say that Dr. Tommy Timmons is one of our greatest advocates and collaborators on this work. John Ross taught me that about a word called ally ship. I want to make sure that everyone is clear that even our white male counterparts have an important role to play in this and I want to always make sure that Tommy is included. Not just because of the graduate work that he's done but because of the life experiences and how much that he knows about involving stakeholders and that ally ship is so vital. But why open education resources. It's because a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. For centuries districts within states and states within our country have sought to leverage advantages over other districts and states that have left many schools. Districts and states behind the April on an uneven playing field leveraging funds time staff and high quality resources to create advantages for specific populations of students. Schools were designed to prepare white affluent students to lead and poor minority students to follow. I began school more than a decade after the infamous Brown versus Board of Education case. But even I saw there's so much more work to do. We are not finished making our school opportunities in educational opportunities equal. My mother had both the educational and financial means to live in the suburbs and send her kids to the best schools. She was often ridiculed for choosing to live in the suburbs and send her children to predominantly white schools. There was fear behind this. While my husband and I possessed the means to do the same. We did just the opposite. My husband is a proud graduate of Columbus City Schools and he insisted that his children live in the inner city and attend public schools. I have worked in public schools for 30 years and have spent my career finding ways to level the playing field for the entire student population. The internet and open education resources for mathematics played a vital role in helping me level the playing field for my students and mathematics. And it is my hope and our district's hope that working with digital promise to develop classroom resources for social justice and equity will result in changing the game and leveling the playing field, much like Khan Academy and illustrative math did for mathematics. So we are really looking forward to digging in and working to develop resources that will cut the learning curve for many of the districts that are just getting started with this work. And we encourage you to join us. Thanks Lisa, we will hear much more from folks during the panel, but I do want to turn it over now to Kim Smith, who was going to talk about our inclusive innovation model, and how we're going to be doing this design work this co design work with the Reynolds Berg team and teams across the other 12 participating districts. Thank you folks from Reynolds Berg and thank you Nora appreciate how you're framing this conversation folks out in the audience, you know, digital promise our focus is really on how we support schools and districts across the country to really think about advancing teaching and learning through practices programs and models where communities and districts are at the table, really imagining the future of learning. This project that you're hearing about is one of our inclusive innovation projects. And when we think about inclusive innovation we're thinking about, you know what is what does education look like if we have communities and districts side by side, really thinking about how to support our students and our families. And that seems to make a lot of sense to me, particularly if we look at the past two years, inclusive innovations as we define them are differentiated novel or radical solutions that are designed, designed with not for community stakeholders, who are a part of this opportunity and we have a set of tenants that Jenny will click through here, where we really focus on co leadership, co research and co design. And the idea is that we're, we have new tables where district leaders teachers students parents community members are side by side on co leading co researching and co designing. We prioritize context expertise we think about the lived experience of people within communities and we prioritize that lived experience alongside the experience of these educators that are that are here with us today. And that's the intersection of race and poverty and, and, and we really think about that as a factor in the design of solutions. And we understand progress when community stakeholders have, when three things are true. When community stakeholders stakeholders have access can participate and can benefit from solutions. And at the end of the day capacity building so that communities can sustain these practices is really important as well. So those are our core tenants of this work. And when we say community we mean the entirety of the education ecosystem. The folks who have the shared identities lived experiences proximity to students and families. So think about your spiritual leaders your caregivers elders community members after school leaders youth advocates local business owners. And you name it. We believe that there's a there's room at the table to engage community fully with schools in there's this reimagination. This is the model, pretty straightforward. We have five phases of inclusive innovation we start with connecting commit. We are very intentional about relationship building trust building shared commitment up front. And we spend a very intentional amount of time in doing that. And then we began the work of really understanding the challenge, the local challenge, creating prototype solutions, engaging in continuing to iterate on those solutions and equity practices throughout. Thanks, Jenny. Thank you, Kim. So that was a lot of information but we wanted to really open the floor for conversation and I will start with a question that was put in the chat by Heather Ross. I think it's a great comment and would love to hear folks responses, she said one point that's come a lot for us is how many times can you go back to the same stakeholders for their time and energy. And I think it's a great process with our indigenization reconciliation work we're doing the individuals have been discriminated against physically and emotional hurt, emotionally hurt by our society. So how do we keep asking them to help us be better. Anyone have thoughts on that. It's a great question. I think it's a, like, it's difficult to have like a easy answer for that. I know that you're, as you work with people you liked and they contribute. And then you think, who can I get to help you automatically want to go back to that same population. One of the things that has helped us in our partnerships with people is making sure that they feel valued in the work and that they see value coming back to them. And more than likely that encourages them to continue to participate. And sometimes one of the techniques that we'll use is okay, we know we know we've used you multiple times. Is there anybody else in your in your sphere of influence that you think we could reach out to that would be interested in, and helping us with those type of endeavors. So, yeah, I feel you, especially when you have, you know, that person is not only being used by you for one initiative, they're being used by other organizations and even committees within your own sphere of influence, and they get drained, they get drained. Hey Jenny one thing that I add I think, and thanks Tommy is, you know, trying to think about the roles that people can play. I think that if we think about, you know, how do we go back to this value proposition that Tommy was talking about right and there and the reason why someone would come to be involved and making sure that the outcome of that is really a value. But we also think that there's also, you know, if we think about folks leading the process, being co designers, being, you know, co creators. Many times people are brought in for opinion or focus groups or feedback. Right, so it's a one way street. And we are thinking about what is that loop closing looks like look like for stakeholders so that there is value so I thinking about thinking about how you really close that loop. I think is also critical piece. I would agree and I think part of why we do define community so broadly in this work is to try to bring voices to the table who are not yet at the table right if we always are bringing the same folks to the table, we're going to get the same solutions the same answers but there are many many folks within communities who have, you know, cultural wealth and knowledge to contribute who are never tapped so I love your suggestion Tommy of asking folks you know who else you can talk to in the community. One of the things that we try to do in the inquire and investigate stage of inclusive innovation is reach out to folks to get their opinions their input but use that as an opportunity to invite them into the process as co designers so really help them see the value of participation. The other thing which sounds really basic is we pay them right we don't want them to we don't want this to be more uncompensated work by folks whose work is already often uncompensated. So to the degree that we can sometimes we pay them in food sometimes we pay them in gift cards, but we try to build into the projects that we do compensation, so that people understand because that's a very clear way of communicating to folks that we value their contributions and we want them to be part of this work with us. I don't see any other questions, I'm going to ask a question and I hope that if folks have additional questions I'll put them in the chat. But one of the things that we obviously see happening around the country right now is a political politicization politicization of this space. You know, sort of closing down on folks ability to have these important conversations about racial equity and social justice. We see a lot of, you know, misinformation and fear associated with this notion of critical race theory and folks really putting in place or trying to put in place a lot of restrictions around what can be taught about our histories and so I would love to hear, you know, from from newer and also from the Reynolds Berg team. What is what makes it possible for you all to do this work and take this brave stance. To start with this my school's unity club. Just had a conversation about this last week with the growing concern on teaching critical race theory. This isn't something really to think about on a high school level which we know but what's really happening is the, the there's this list of words that are associated with critical race theory now, and the course that's offered in law schools and colleges and a lot of these words are, are like equity and inclusivity. You know, people twisting that into meaning that that it's not inclusive or, you know, things like that so in my school district I know it's being talked about a lot I go to a school and suburban Wisconsin, and a lot of the work that we've been doing to those school board meetings and talking to the best of our abilities on why these topics are important and how, how distant the word inclusivity and equity really is from, you know, a course that is a graduate level course. So, yeah, the, the conversations are happening and it's scary I've had teachers that aren't willing to have the conversation in the first place because it is their job that they're risking when talking about these things but it's important. I'd like to chime. I'd like to chime in on that. I don't know why my camera doesn't show up but I'd also like to say nor you did a wonderful job there at the beginning I appreciated your perspective and all that you had to say. But I'd like to say on on your question Jenny. There is no option to stand back and not be a part of this work. If you have children, if you have grandchildren, if you are walking out of your door on a regular basis and leaving your household. If you have to work with people of all different types of backgrounds, and it is vitally important that you understand them and their cultures and what they're experiencing in order to have a conversation and treat people with dignity on a regular basis. So, there is no option to not be a part of the work is kind of what I'd like to say on that. And I'm an old lady. Now what we talked about to in high school is you know building a successful a student, a student that can go out into the world and contribute and you can't do that without having inclusivity, and you can't do that without having a lens that includes everyone. I just want to give you guys a two minute warning we've got about two minutes left in this session. Thank you Sam. There is one more question and I don't know Kim if you want to speak to this one. It's asking about logistics how, how did community get built and what does outreach look like so I do you want to talk about what that looks like in the inclusive innovation model. I would actually ask Elizabeth for some more context. Are you referring to the inclusive innovation model or what Reynolds Berg is working on specifically. If you're able to speak, if not we'll just, we'll wing it. Either she says, okay either. You know, logistics is interesting you know we, for the inclusive innovation model we, we have this notion of core team, right and the core team is 70 and sorry 50% folks from the district such as teachers, district leaders, instructional coaches, counselors, and then the other half of the core team are parents, students, community members. And it strikes a really great balance and then the other piece of the logistics is that it's co led so the work is co led by a teacher or district leader in partnership with a community member. And, and that's, they work in partnership to lead the project through its entirety so we have with Reynolds Berg. We have that that type of structure for the next year. And they'll be working together to lead the project. And the outreach really, you know the district is, is the one who, who did the outreach to community partners to community members. So we, we follow the lead of folks like Reynolds Berg to put forth community members and bring new folks to the table. I want to thank you guys for your presentation and give you like 132 second last minute word and then we need to call the end of the session anybody who would like to stick around and chat afterwards is welcome to but I'm going to stop the recording now. Great, well, I will just say thank you so much for joining us. And, you know, we would love to continue the conversation so you can find us on Twitter at these, at these Twitter handles. We also look for Reynolds Berg city schools and digital promise on the web, and we will be sharing resources and case studies as this work proceeds so we'll be sure to share that broadly so that folks can understand what's being developed that that you can take advantage of as part of this work. Thanks everyone so much for being.